A Guide to Intermittent Fasting For Fat Loss
There’s a right and wrong way to do it.
Intermittent fasting has gained popularity over the past few years. It is a lifestyle that involves severe caloric restriction for a few hours known as the fasting window, followed by a feeding window that allows us to eat. The most popular type of fasting practiced is the 16:8 method which involves fasting for 16 hours, often skipping breakfast, then having 8 hours to eat. There are other types like the 12:12, 20:4 and the 5:2 diet which is a strange hybrid involving normal eating for 5 out of the 7 days of the week with 2 days where calories are restricted to within 500–600 for 24 hours. Fat loss at its core involves a reduction in caloric intake and intermittent fasting provides such means.
According to neuroscientist Mark Mattson, PhD. at John Hopkins teaching hospital, who studied intermittent fasting, the human body is conditioned to go for large periods without food as in prehistoric times humans had to go for days sometimes without food as we were primarily hunters and gatherers. Even a century ago, the rate of obesity was lower as there were no distractions like television, computers, and social media keeping people awake and sedentary. People also ate smaller portions and went outside more, resulting in more energy expended. Nowadays, we’re the farthest thing from hunters and gatherers as food is available in minutes due to apps that allow us to order it to our doorsteps, in addition to television and the internet being available 24/7 so we stay indoors most of the time idle and comfortable with only food to keep us busy, and we have that food in abundance. Intermittent fasting attempts to help us revert to our old ways.
Intermittent fasting for fat loss
Intermittent fasting on its own helps to reduce the number of calories taken daily by acting as a contrast to the normal eating habits of people nowadays. Most people eat food throughout the time that they’re awake allowing for a ridiculous amount of calories to be taken in every day. By restricting the time when you can eat, the amount of food eaten should be reduced too.
The common mistake
The logic behind intermittent fasting is that the amount of food eaten is reduced because the amount of time to eat is reduced. That logic is abused a lot as we could think that makes it a golden bullet to fat loss and spend our feeding window ingesting an enormous amount of food. Doing that would counter the mechanism of IF causing us to remain stagnant or even end up gaining weight.
The Solution
The best way to maximize intermittent fasting for fat loss is combining it with portion control during our eating window. I understand that after a long period of time without eating, our first thought is to binge and eat whatever we can lay our hands on but that just makes the time we’ve spent fasting useless. 3000 calories is still 3000 calories, whether it was spread over the course of one day or eaten within 8 hours. In the case of the more common 16:8 split, I would advise eating two meals to minimize the chance of eating too much and help us to spread our calories evenly between those meals so we can eat a bit more than we could have, while still eating at a deficit.
Another thing to keep in mind is idleness. The purpose of intermittent fasting is to help is return to how humans used to feed, thus it should be practiced while having something to do. The meaning is, it’s easier to keep your mind off food while you spend time doing your job or going to classes, but if you have nothing to do, and you spend your time idle then it’s a bit more difficult to accomplish.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The beauty of intermittent fasting is that it quickly becomes part of you and can easily be incorporated into a busy lifestyle. So if you can keep these common mistakes in mind, then you can achieve fat loss with minimal effort while avoiding the pitfalls of most of the so-called “diets” out there. I can assure you from my experience that if practiced correctly then your results will be outstanding.
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